After California officials have essentially forced their population to switch to electric vehicles, they are now forcing residents to cut back on car charging during a dramatic heat wave. The shocking change of pace has left many critics baffled by the environmentalist insanity within California’s government.
THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER: California won’t let you charge the electric car it wants to force you to buy
Zachary Faria; August 31, 2022
California has reaffirmed its commitment to banning gasoline-powered cars and requiring all new sales to be of electric cars in coming years.
Now, California’s grid operator is telling residents not to charge their electric cars during regular heat waves in order to avoid straining the grid.
Residents have been advised to take voluntary energy cuts, including setting their thermostats to 78 degrees Fahrenheit and not charging their electric cars. This is because the “demand for electricity remains high and there is less solar energy available.” It turns out you can’t run a state of roughly 39 million people entirely on solar panels. Who could have guessed?
These voluntary energy cuts, which so often turn into involuntary rolling blackouts, mean that the state does not want people to charge the electric cars it is trying to force them to buy. There are just under 600,000 electric cars being driven in the state, and yet that is enough to bring the current system to its knees during a heat wave. California only recently announced that gas-powered cars will be illegal to sell in the state starting in 2035.
Imagine the next heat wave, but with an additional 15.4 million electric cars — or about 25 times the current number. That is the future California is courting.
And it can only get worse. The state has phased out nuclear power, the only reliable carbon-free form of energy it had. Diablo Canyon, the state’s last nuclear power plant, provides nearly 9% of the state’s electricity and is set to shut down in 2025. Gov. Gavin Newsom has tried to extend the plant’s operations temporarily, perhaps realizing how stupid it would be to shut it down when the state can’t even reach its own decarbonization goals. But California legislators have been debating that extension for weeks because, apparently, the choice between clean nuclear energy and regular blackouts is a tough one.
California is the worst-run state in the country. There is no dispute about this. Just 4% of cars on its roads are electric. The state has admitted that it cannot support that paltry number during a heat wave, yet it wants to turn that 4% into 100% even as it plans to kneecap its own electricity production.
There is no logic to any of this — just environmentalist lunacy that will leave Californians without air conditioning or a way to drive to work or school or to the grocery store. On the bright side, California won’t have to worry about carbon emissions if the next heat wave drives it back to the Stone Age.